


Rain Sound

by resonae



Category: S.W.A.T. (2003)
Genre: Character Death, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resonae/pseuds/resonae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It keeps raining, and Jim can’t forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain Sound

**Author's Note:**

> Songfic to B.A.P's "[Rain Sound](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ghpiNIKGIo)".

When Jim decides to hold a funeral for Brian, Fuller looks at him as if he’s crazy. “He’s a criminal, Street.” Fuller says, and Jim says nothing. But in the end, Fuller can’t do anything. Brian doesn’t have any family, so the only one Brian’s got listed under relations is Jim.

 

He goes around to ask Boxer, who says _of course I’ll come_. Sanchez reminds him Brian shot Boxer. Boxer says, “He was a good kid.” Sanchez calls him crazy.

 

Hondo volunteers himself to the funeral. It’s not gonna be a funeral. It’s a little good bye that Jim has planned, but Hondo says he’ll come anyway. “He seemed like a smart kid. I would have liked the full Street-Gamble set.” Jim thinks Brian was a genius, but doesn’t say anything else.

 

It rains on the day of the ‘funeral’, which Jim can’t help but laugh at. It rained on the day they met. He doesn’t cry as they spread Brian’s ashes to the river. Jim knows Sanchez thinks they’re stupid, and knows Hondo is here only for respect of the soldier who he would have liked to meet. Boxer is here because Brian and Boxer were _friends_ , one of the only ones Brian really had on the force.

 

Jim stays after everyone leaves. Boxer stays with him for a while, just watching the sun set in the distance, but he rises from the dirt after a while. “He’ll be in a good place, Jim.” Boxer says. Jim doesn’t know that, but Boxer seems sure. He guesses if the person who Brian shot is sure, he should be too.

 

He doesn’t get home until he’s drunk and he punches the radio to life. He can’t fall into bed, or the couch, or even sit in the kitchen. Everything smells like Brian in his house. There are two coffee mugs on the kitchen counter that Jim never washed. Jim falls to the floor, and even that smells like Brian.

 

The rain beats on the windows and he can’t fall asleep.

_You’re a chaotic question-and-answer type of person_   
_I just close my mouth_   
_Love is buried in a farewell_   
_Outside the window, the forgotten rainy wind blows_   
_Familiar music sounds from the radio late at night_   
_It’s perfect for me to think of you_   
_The two empty coffee cups_   
_In the place you aren’t here, I fight with loneliness_

Fuller gives him time off. Jim’s pretty sure it’s Hondo who convinced Fuller, but he finds himself walking in the daytime without uniform. Brian would have liked it.

 

He can hear Brian’s laughter in his ear, the obnoxious chuckle that sounds like he’s wheezing half the time. Sometimes if he’s happy enough he’ll laugh doubled over, and Jim will wait with a grin on his face until Brian can wipe the tears from his eyes and punch Jim in the shoulder.

 

He enters the little diner they went together all the time. The small Italian lady who runs the place can’t look at him without bursting into tears. “He was a good boy,” she tells him as she wipes tears from her cheeks. “No one understood him but you, James.”

 

He nods as he holds her, but can’t bring himself to actually eat at the corner table she always had for them. He gives her a tight hug and she packs Brian’s favorite food for him. He almost throws up but manages to take it with him on his way out.

 

He passes by the theater that has arm handles they can push up so Brian can snuggle into him during movies. It’s warm, and pleasant, like it always is during fall in Los Angeles. There’s an easy breeze that ruffles through Jim’s hair and it feels like Brian’s fingers are carding through them.

 

Jim manages to make it home and fall on his bed. It smells like Brian.

 

_I walk the streets by myself_   
_I look at the cafe and theater we used to go to often_   
_Even I’m falling in memories, so how are you?_   
_Do you remember the weather, the warmth, and even the wind that brushes by?_   
_I’m a person who’ll just get forgotten like a black and white film that’s gone by_   
_I still long for you as I fall asleep_   
_It’s a rainy night,_   
_And I can’t sleep today_

He wakes up to the sound of drizzle on his windows. It’s a light pitter-patter. It’s rare for it to rain so often in Los Angeles, even if it’s light. Jim remembers Brian would sit up just to listen to the rain, and his hands run through the sheets that Brian used to tangle himself in.

 

He closes his eyes, trying not to remember. It’s impossible, especially with the rain outside. The rain sounds like Brian’s voice, the sheets smell like Brian, and Jim can’t help but shudder.

 

He ends up staying up all night, haunted by memories and whispers of a voice that calls his name. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget Brian.

 

He doesn’t know if he ever wants to.

_Is this rain sound your voice?_   
_Is it calling me?_   
_Am I the only one that thinks of you?_   
_Will this rain make me feel better?_   
_Do you know how I feel?_   
_I keep thinking of you  
_ _(I draw you with a pencil and erase you with the eraser that is the falling rain)  
_ _(I draw you again today. Will I be able to erase you?)_

When Jim manages to finally fall asleep, he dreams of running through the pouring rain. Brian always had an obnoxiously red umbrella, but none of that does anything in the torrential downpour. It’s rare – almost unheard of – for Los Angeles to get so much rain, but Brian is laughing so hard Jim can’t care at all.

 

He wakes up with Brian’s laughter still ringing in his ears. It’s raining so hard that when walks to the window, he thinks the window might break. It never rains like this in LA. It did, once before, and that day they’d run into their house, soaked to the bone. Brian never stopped laughing, and Jim can still hear it.

 

When he walks over to where shoes are messily shoved to one side, a red umbrella rests in the corner. It’s collected dust. He takes the handle. It feels awkward in his hands, like it’s molded into the shape of Brian’s hand. He steps outside into the downpour and opens the umbrella.

 

The umbrella doesn’t do much. He gets soaked anyway, and he stands there because no one can tell he’s crying when it’s raining.

_A bright red umbrella,_   
_Clothes and sneakers that are soaked_   
_I turn the heater on and off_   
_Nothing I do will dry me_   
_Is that what I want?_

With Brian, everything was about the rain. It rained the day they met, it rained when Jim fell in love with him, and it had rained when Jim asked Brian out.

 

Jim still remembers how he fell in love with Brian. He thinks he’d been in love, but he’d been too dumb to realize it until that day he saw Brian in the rain. Brian had tackled him down into the mud and he’d laughed while Jim cursed, and they’d ended up rolling until Brian ended up below him and suddenly they’d been making out.

 

Jim asked him out three days later, when it was raining so hard they could barely breathe as they ran during SEAL training. Jim had screamed the question at him as they did target practice in the rain, and Brian had screamed the answer back, laughing all the while.

 

When they checked the next day, only Brian had gotten all bulls’ eye on his targets. Jim feels like one of those bullets dug its way into his chest and stayed there.

_  
It’s a chaotic question and answer  
_ _I fell for you on a rainy day  
_ _We really loved each other a lot  
_ _It seems like we never needed to do that (with effort)  
_ _So my heart hurts (my heart hurts)  
_ _(From the start, I held you in my left chest and left an thick imprint)  
_ _Now you’re left like a shard that’s deeply embedded  
_ _And you pull me in_

Jim stands in his kitchen in the morning. Brian always cooked, and whatever he makes now tastes like sandpaper. The eggs are raw, the toast is burnt, and the coffee is cold. There’s no sizzling of the pan as Brian cracks the eggs, no bubbling of the coffee machine, no dinging from the toaster.

 

When he showers, he forgets to take new clothes with him. Brian always had a fresh towel and a new set of clothes waiting for him when he stepped out of the shower. He leaves wet footprints on the floor as he trudges to his closet. He can hear Brian yelling at him to clean it up, but when he turns around the only thing he can hear is the rain beating down on the windows.

 

He wonders how he used to live without Brian.

_I feel like I lied to you and said I can live without you_   
_So I throw my heart away_   
_I still long for you as I fall asleep_   
_It’s a rainy night,_   
_And I can’t sleep today_

The news says it’s an unprecedented amount of rain.

 

Jim thinks the world is lamenting Brian’s death. When he lies down in bed and runs his hand over the blanket on Brian’s side, he can hear Brian’s voice laughing through the rain, calling his name.

 

Jim wishes he can turn around and find Brian grinning at him, but he knows the only thing he’ll find when he turns around is empty space. Maybe he’s going insane. He doesn’t know. Without Brian to keep him going, he doesn’t really know what’s what anymore.

 

The rain keeps beating down on the windows, on the roof, on the walls, and Jim wishes he could make it stop and keep it going at the same time.

_Is this rain sound your voice?_   
_Is it calling me?_   
_Am I the only one that thinks of you?_   
_Will this rain make me feel better?_   
_Do you know how I feel?_   
_I keep thinking of you_

Sanchez says he’s stupid and tells him to wake up from the dream, to leave the past and look forward. She doesn’t understand how Brian was his past, is his present, will be his future. It doesn’t matter if he’s dead.  Boxer tells her to leave him alone. He looks outside and comments on the never-ending rain.

 

Jim can feel Boxer’s eyes on him. Boxer knows just as much as Jim does how much Brian loved the rain. “Nice weather,” is what Boxer ends up saying.

 

“Nice weather?” Sanchez repeats. “I can’t fucking believe this weather. It hasn’t stopped raining since Gamble’s funeral. It’s like he’s cursed us or something.”

 

Boxer shrugs. “He’d never curse Street.”

 

“But he’d stab a hole through his hand? Sure, Boxer.”

 

Sanchez doesn’t understand, and Jim doesn’t expect her to. She never knew Brian. But Boxer did, and Boxer knows their bond. Jim’s hand throbs at his side. He wishes on the day Brian walked out of LAPD, Jim followed him.

 

The only thing he can see is Brian’s dead body, lying limp in the train tracks.

_Sky, please help me_   
_Stop this rain_   
_So I can forget that person_

That night, he can’t sleep again. His mind is filled with could-bes and could-haves.

 

He killed Brian. He can’t get the thought out of his head. He killed Brian. His hands had pushed Brian under the train’s wheels. He still remembers the horrifying squelch of bones and flesh and brain matter, the way Brian’s beautiful face had disappeared.

 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, clutching his fingers into Brian’s side of the bed and wishing he could comb his fingers through the short blonde spikes, run his finger along the tattooed arm. “I’m so sorry.”

 

The rain has no answer for him.

_Is this rain sound your voice?_   
_Is it calling me?_   
_Am I the only one that thinks of you?_   
_Will this rain make me feel better?_   
_Do you know how I feel?_   
_I keep thinking of you_

He sits in front of the TV. A small vase filled with Brian’s ashes stares back. The reason Jim had him cremated was because he couldn’t bear the thought of Brian’s body rotting under the dirt, being eaten by all sorts of things. Brian always hated bugs.

 

He kept some of Brian’s ashes with him, back then. He stares at it and takes it into his hands. “I’m sorry.” He tells it. “I loved you.” Still do, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud.

 

The house is full of memories he has with Brian. The bed they shared, the couch they snuggled on, the table they ate on, the shower they battled for, the pictures all along the walls. Even if he wanted to, Jim can’t forget Brian.

 

Not that he wants to. Ever.

_The rain sound echoes outside the window_   
_I remember our memories_   
_I can’t live without you_   
_On rainy days, I miss it_   
_The kiss with you_

“I can’t live with you.” Jim tells the vase. “You forgive me, right? I’m going to meet you now. Wherever you are, I’m going there.” He holds Brian’s gun to his head. Hondo had pulled strings to get it back to Jim after Brian’s things were confiscated. When he pulls, the torrents of rain outside muffles the shot and no one hears.

 

The next day, Boxer drives over to the house Brian and Jim shared, and pushes the unlocked door open.

 

Jim is lying on the floor, eyes closed. There’s a bullet hole through his temple, and the blood has long dried.

 

It’s Boxer, Hondo, and Sanchez spreading Jim’s ashes to the wind, the exact same place Jim let go of Brian. Boxer pulls out the urn with Brian’s ashes and pours the handful that’s remaining into the urn, and then lets it float down the river.

 

“Gamble liked this place.” Boxer says. “Street liked bringing him here.”

 

Sanchez says nothing. Boxer thinks she’s starting to understand. Hondo watches the urn float out of sight. “They’re at a good place. Together.”

 

It stops raining.

_The rain sound echoes outside the window_   
_I remember our memories_   
_I can’t live without you_   
_On rainy days,_   
_I always meet you_


End file.
